By: Dr. Aref Assaf
The Palestinians should totally scrap the idea of a two-state solution. Even their UN bid for a non-member status, which understandably is a tactical, not strategic objective, should be withdrawn. A majority Palestinian populated state already exists in historic Palestine. This conclusion is not the result of Palestinian wishful thinking or baseless propaganda by Anti-Semites. But the Jewish minority population enjoys political and economic supremacy. A “democratic” apartheid aptly describes the official and public assessment of what Israel has become.
That historic (British Mandate) Palestine, the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea has a Palestinian majority population is the official finding of an Israeli government agency in the current government of PM Netanyahu. For so long, pro-Israeli pundits have dismissed comparisons with South Africa’s apartheid regime where a minority of Whites ruled over a majority of Blacks under a brutal racial and inhumane regime. But now in an Israeli controlled territory, a minority rules a majority. Of course, it should be noted that the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid makes no mention of majority or minority rule, nor does it limit the scope of the term apartheid to situations that closely resemble the South African model.
A new economic report has revealed that there are now more Palestinians than Jews in the territory under Israel’s jurisdiction between the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan. Published in The Marker, a Haaretz newspaper article says that the report virtually portends official acknowledgment by the Netanyahu government that Jews are a minority in historic Palestine.
Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar wrote in a Haaretz article, “In other words, in the territory under Israel’s jurisdiction a situation of apartheid exists. A Jewish minority rules over an Arab majority.” The report puts the official statistics at 5.9 million Jews and 6.1 million Arabs. “In other words, between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River,” remarked Eldar, “there is a pretty Jewish state as far as its laws and customs, but the reality is not so democratic.”
The new demographic reality in Israel is being noticed by the United States. Caroline Glick most recent column, writing in the Jerusalem Post contains important demographic data. In his speech delivered May 2011, about the Middle East, President Obama stated, “The number of Palestinians living west of the Jordan River is growing rapidly and fundamentally reshaping the demographic realities of both Israel and the Palestinian territories. This will make it harder and harder – without a peace deal – to maintain Israel as both a Jewish state and a democratic state.”
Glick adds, “It is unnecessary to dwell on what the {Israeli} prime minister may expect if Obama remains in the White House for four more years. But even if Mitt Romney spends the next four years there, Obama will continue to hold full presidential authority until January 20, 2013.”
“What damage would an outgoing President Obama do if the day after the November 6th presidential election he instructs the US ambassador to the United Nations to support Palestine’s bid to join the organization?” A campaigning Netanyahu will not have a problem turning that into additional proof that the whole world is against Israel and so the country really needs a strong leader, he concluded.
What is most striking is that the Israeli public’s growing acceptance of apartheid policies. A recent poll published in Haaretz points to a sizable majority of Jews readily accepting discrimination against Israeli Arab citizens and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. (See chart here.) The survey indicates that a third to half of Jewish Israelis want to live in a state that practices formal, open discrimination against its Arab citizens. An even larger majority wants to live in an apartheid state if Israel annexes the territories. The survey exposes anti-Arab, ultra-nationalist views espoused by a majority of Israeli Jews. The survey was commissioned by the Yisraela Goldblum Fund and is based on a sample of 503 interviewees. A sweeping 74 percent majority is in favor of separate roads for Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank. Although the territories have not been annexed, most of the Jewish public (58 percent) already believes Israel practices apartheid against Arabs.
The figures of declining Jewish presence in historic Palestine, in fact, was also confirmed as far back as 2005 when the U.S. State Department’s annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2004 put the number of Jews at 5.3 million; the Arabs at 5.3 million. Curiously, the report failed to connect all the dots to arrive at the explosive new demographic reality that an Israeli Jewish minority now rules over a larger number of Palestinians living between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
The recent news will not please Israeli pundits who, for last few years, have been arguing that the ‘demographic bomb’ was actually favoring the Jewish, not the Arab population. That in fact, Israel has been witnessing higher Jewish birth rates than Arabs. According to the American-Israel Demographic Research Group, “There is a demographic problem, but it is not lethal, and the demographic trend is Jewish and not Arab. The demographic momentum is shifting from the Arab to the Jewish sector. Demography constitutes a strategic asset, not a liability, for the Jewish State.” (AIDRG) Key Findings, April 2008
As the US continues to provide both moral and financial assistance, questions about its complicity in maintaining an apartheid regime in Israel will rise and eventually become part of our national discourse. I hope that America’s moral compass will inevitably revert back to its rightful place. Until then, my tax money that goes to aid Israeli apartheid should be refunded. For Israel to survive as a Jewish state, it must and immediately embark on policies that relegate the racist doctrines it has accepted for itself and all of its citizens and those it has authority over. Numbers may not be everything, but eventually, they will.
Dr. Aref Assaf just returned from a two-week tour of the West Bank. His is president of the American Arab Forum, a think tank specializing in Arab and Muslim American affairs.
